SpicyBo1

Pandorum has a solid idea, but the problems lie mostly in the structure of the screenplay. I'm a sucker for sci-fi horror movies like Event Horizon and Aliens, so I obviously have a little bias towards it, but I did still think that some things were confusing and that the structure of the plot itself didn't really hold up. The main problem comes in the problems posed by the script, and how they're solved. The actual ideas themselves, the ending, the pandorum mental degradation, and the idea that Earth's gone are all very solid sci-fi ideas, but when it comes to the plot and problems posed within the script, the actual flow of the story falls apart. A lot of problems seem very confusing or hastily solved, with little care to the ship's actual geography and how most of the tech works. The beginning falls prey to this the most for me, as I did enjoy the ending, and the middle was solid, I guess. The beginning felt like I was being whiplashed with all this information that was interesting, but the plot really hadn't shown up yet and I didn't know what each character's goal was. The characters also were a bit of an issue, because I really didn't care about any of them. The main guy's story with his girlfriend, his new girlfriend, and the guy who literally had no other character trait besides speaking Vietnamese and being skilled in a fight, I all could care less about. Dennis Quaid's character was honestly the most interesting to me, but his plot only really starts halfway through the film, so the first half is a little underperfoming for me. Oh, also, the visual style of this film really is something. I mean, I liked it at some parts, but at others it felt like the editor was high on speed half the time. The shots didn't really have that much of a coherence most of the time. Some were cinematic. Some felt like an after-school special. I do, however, like the ideas posed in this film. Exploring what a lack of information can do, the memory loss actually being a solid storytelling device (albeit underused), and the whole sci-fi elements which really did feel like an Event Horizon-esque movie (which, if you didn't catch it earlier), I love. And I honestly didn't expect the ending, but it wasn't out of left field, so that's a plus. Pandorum had a lot of potential. If the plot was reworked structurally and the ideas were presented more cleanly and less confusingly, the movie could be much better. However, as it is, it's alright. also if i had a nickel for every time there was a main character trying to find his wife on a survival horror spaceship, i'd have two nickels, but it's weird that it happened twice

Underneath all the Paul Verhoeven silliness, effects, and gloriously gory action, RoboCop is a very strong (and honestly still relevant) piece of satire about the corporate industry, and the bloodsucking people do for a higher rank in the corporate ladder. The whole film revolves around Murphy, a cop who's forced to become a super robot cop after his untimely demise at the hands of a gang in Detroit (who's led by a balding middle aged man who looks like a schoolteacher, and yes, he's still menacing). The corporation sees him as nothing less than a product to be sold and marketed, wiping any memory of his past life. It's a very strong satire and message of corporations seeing nothing but the profit margins and money instead of the actual people, both consumers and workers. The whole goal of Omnicorp is to pretty much gentrify the entirety of Detroit, which is even more relevant now than ever, as the gap grows between the rich and the poor. Omnicorp does not actually care about crime, as shown as how they don't give any shits about the cops, just how well they work, only focusing on how they can conceivably attain their goal. A facet of the film that I also really like (that isn't related to the writing and story by Edward Neumeier (who also wrote Starship Troopers, which I really enjoy) and Michael Miner) is the effects. Yes, they do look a bit dated today, and I did kind of lose my shit when Dick got thrown out the window and turned into a puppet, but what they were able to achieve is very impressive. Murphy himself as RoboCop is extremely well done, and could honestly stand up to some modern effects. Oh, and I also love how over-the-top the violence is in this movie. I have a bit of a soft spot for over-the-top violence and gore, so that's an additional boon in my opinion. RoboCop is a very strong piece of satire which still holds up surprisingly well today, and most important of all, is a very fun, very wild watch. also the guy getting dumped into the vat of waste and then exploding a few minutes later is pure genius, why didn't i ever think of that

The Manchurian Candidate is a suprisingly modern-feeling movie (or at least I thought it was), for the time period it was made in. Other than some of the dialogue's dialect, the story felt very modern, like it could have been made recently, which is a very hard feat for an older movie like this to do. One of the only other movies that gave me this feeling was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I thought felt like a 2000s film. The story, albeit a bit confusing and long-winded at some points, is still very strong, and represents the fear of political control and losing one's own mind very well, and still feels oddly relevant today. Much of Shaw's character I found very strong, especially with his own inner struggles about now knowing if he's really all there or the psychological damage dealt by his parents political games was very well done and portrayed greatly by Lawrence Harvey. One part where I did feel the movie got a bit muddled and long, was with Frank Sinatra's character. He doesn't really feel like he drives any of his own story, really just being the man to stop Shaw, with his only agency really being figuring out Shaw's conditioning and how to stop it. His relationship with Janet Leigh's character really felt odd as well, being not just a sidetrack, but honestly making me think her character was a Russian agent sent, based on how much she was throwing herself at him. Overall, The Manchurian Candidate is a very well done movies, with a bit of pacing and side character issues, but a great movie when it was released, and holds up through time. also janet leigh was the psycho in this movie

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is a very solid, very entertaining movie. While, and this is a very high bar to beat, I think Interstellar and The Dark Knight are better, The Odyssey is pretty high up there in his works for me. First of all, the ending was the best part of the movie. My personal favorite was when Odysseus was watching the carnage unfold during the Fall of Troy, which (in my opinion) was very artistically and stylistically done well, selling the horrors that unfolded during the battle. The ending battle with the suitors was also very cool, but it was also my favorite part in the original story, so it's hard to go wrong there. One thing I was surprised by was the horror elements present in Scylla, Circe's pig transformation, and the Cyclops, which really makes me thing Nolan wants to make a horror movie. The Cyclops and the pig transformation were genuinely a bit unsettling, both with the wails of the Cyclops and the jarring transformations from pig to man. One small critique I do have, is that some of the middle felt a little lengthy and some of the dialogue didn't seem as strong as in other Nolan films, but those are not super distracting to the main story. I also would have liked a bit less modern of dialect for the Greeks. Oh, and Zendaya and Tom Holland, while not a negative per se, just felt a bit out of place and distracting, especially with the fact that Zendaya really only shows up for a few minutes at most, and Tom Holland really does a whole lotta nothing in this film. Robert Pattinson is an underrated actor in my opinion, and he did an excellent job in this movie. He was VERY hateable, and I think some people in the audience cheered when he got the lot shoved down his throat and died. Also, you should watch Mickey 17. He's very good in that too. Overall, Nolan's Odyssey, while not without its flaws, is a very strong, very entertaining movie, with some very solid writing, cinematography, and acting jobs. also the theater I watched this in blew my eardrums the fuck out